201 



HALL, SIR BENJAMIN, M.P. 



HALL, REV. R03ERT. 



2J3 



at Valparaiso. The above three papers are published it! the ' Tran- 

 sactions of the Royal Society.' A Sketch of the Professional and 

 Scientific Objects which might be aimed at in a Voyage of Research. 

 A Letter on the Trade Winds, in the Appendix to Daniel's ' Meteoro- 

 logy > ' with scientific papers in Brewster's ' Journal,' Jameson's 

 ' Journal,' and the ' Encyclopaedia, Britannica.' 



Captain Basil Hall having been unfortunately seized with mental 

 alienation, was placed in the Royal Hospital, Haslar, Portsmouth, 

 where he died on the llth of September 1844. 



"HALL, THE RIGHT HON. SIR BENJAMIN, M.P., is the son of 

 the late Mr. Benjamin Hall, many years M.P. for Totnes, Westbury, 

 and Glamorganshire, by a daughter of William Crawahay, Esq., an 

 extensive iron-master in South Wales. He was born in 1802, and 

 received his early education at Westminster School and Christ- 

 church, Oxford. He first entered upon public life in 1831, when he 

 was returned to Parliament for Monmouthshire in opposition to the 

 Marquis of Worcester, afterwards Duke of Beaufort, in whose family 

 the representation of that county had been vested for several gene- 

 rations. Though unseated on petitiou, he was re-elected in December 

 1832, after the passing of the Reform Bill, and continued to represent 

 that constituency until 1837, when he was elected for tbe metro- 

 politan borough of Harylebone, for which he has continued to sit 

 without interruption to the present time (September 1856). From the 

 time of his first entry upon parliamentary life, he has devoted great 

 attention to public business, and more especially to the state, pros- 

 pecU, and revenues of the Established Church, in which he has effected 

 soms judicious and well timed reforms by bringing abuses to light, 

 and by subjecting the establishment and its dignitaries to the juris- 

 diction of the state, and the control of parliament, and of public 

 opinion. He hag also from year to year brought forward bills for 

 the abolition of church-rates, which, though still in existence, may be 

 said to be doomed to early abolition by hi* constant and persevering 

 efforts. He has also steadily advocated the extension of the suffrage 

 and of secular education, and of sanitary and social reforms, as well 

 as the substitution of a property tax in place of the assessed and 

 other taxes. In 1854 be was appointed president of the Board of 

 Health, and was sworn a member of the Privy Council, and in this 

 capacity he brought forward the Act by which all the local adminis- 

 tration of the metropolis is brought under one system. In the follow- 

 ing year he succeeded the late Sir William Molesworth, as chief com- 

 missioner of Public Works. He has also been a z.'alous supporter of 

 the literature and social improvement of his Cambrian countrymen, 

 as well as of the movement for providing tbe working classes with 

 rational amusement on Sundays. He was advanced to a baronetcy 

 for his public services in 1838 on the occasion of her Majesty's 

 coronation. 



HALL, or HALLE, EDWARD, an English lawyer and historian, 

 was the son of John Halle of Northall in Shropshire, and was descended 

 from Sir Francis Van Halle, K.I ;., in the time of Edward III., who 

 was tbe son of Frederic de Halle of the Tyrol, natural son of Albert 

 king of the Romans and archduke of Austria. He was born at the 

 close of tbe 15th century, in the parish of St. Mildred, London, and 

 received the first part of his education at Eton School. In 1514 he 

 became scholar of King's College, Cambridge, and continued there till 

 he became a junior fellow; afterwards, about 1518, when Cardinal 

 Wolsey founded various lectures at Oxford, he removed to that uni- 

 versity. Having entered at Gray's Inn, he was called to the bar, and 

 became first one of the common Serjeants, and subsequently under- 

 sheriff of thu city of London. In 1533 he was appointed summer- 

 reader of Cray's Inn, and in 1540 double reader in Lent, and one of 

 the judges of the Sheriff's Court. He died in 1547, and was buried 

 in the church of St. Benet Sherehog. London. 



Hall i Chronicle, entitled ' The Union of the two noble and illustrate 

 Families of Lancaster and Yorke,' was first printed by Burthelette, in 

 small folio, in 1542. This edition is extremely rare. It was dedi- 

 cated to King Henry VIII., and ended with his twenty-fourth year, 

 Qrafton, who reprinted it in 1548, continued the work from 

 Hall's papers to the end of Henry Vlll.'e reign. He again printed 

 it in 1550. 'The boke commonly called Halle's Cronycles ' is one 

 of those which were forbidden by proclamation, 13th June 1555, 

 1*2 Phil, and Mary. A fourth edition, but without any additions 

 or improvements, was printed in 4to, London, 1809, by the booksellers, 

 among the ' English Chronicles.' 



HALL, JOSEPH, an eminent divine and prelate, was born July 

 1st, 1574, at Ashbj-de-la-Xouch, in Leicestershire, and received his 

 academical education at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which in 

 due time be w elected fellow. Having taken orders and received 

 some minor benefices in succession, he was made dean of Worcester in 

 1617 ; lent as one of the English deputies to the synod of Dort in 

 1818 ; appointed bishop of Exeter in 1627, and translated to Norwich 

 in K.I1. His professional zeal and earnest piety involved him in those 

 jealous times in the charge of puritanism ; and being harassed by 

 frequent and vexations attacks, to use his own words : " Under how 

 dark a cloud I was hereupon I was so sensible, that I plainly told the 

 lord archbishop of Cant-nmry [Laud] that rather than I would be 

 obnoxious to those slanderous tongues of his misinformers I would 

 cut up my rochet. I knew I went right ways, and would not endure to 

 live under undeserved suspicions.' 1 In truth he was well attached to the 



church of which he was a member, and wrote strongly in defence of 

 episcopacy when the danger of the times became imminent. In 

 November 1641, having joined others of the bishops in a protest 

 against all laws made during their forced absence from parliament, he 

 was sent to the Tower, and only released in the following June on 

 giving bail for 50001. In the next year the revenues of his bishopric 

 were sequestrated, and during the rest of his life he suffered much 

 from poverty and harsh treatment, of which he has given an account 

 in a piece called ' Hard Measure.' He removed in 1617 to Higham, 

 near Norwich, and died there in 1656. 



His numerous works fill several volumes in the old folio editions, 

 and ten in the modern 8vo. They are chiefly controversial, as will 

 appear from the catalogue in Watt, and therefore of ephemeral popu- 

 larity. His ' Contemplations ' are of more personal and lasting 

 interest, and are esteemed for their language, criticism, and piety ; as 

 also his ' Enochismus, or Treatise on the Mode of Walking with God,' 

 a beautiful tract, translated into English in 1769. To the student of 

 English manners his Satires entitled ' Virgidemiarum," in 6 books, are 

 peculiarly valuable. They have been analysed by Warton, ' History 

 of Poetry,' (iii. 405-40, ed. 1840). He says of them very truly, "The 

 characters are delineated in strong and lively colouring, and their dis- 

 criminations are touched with the masterly traces of genuine humour. 

 The versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the fabric of 

 the couplets approaches to the modern standard. It is no inconsider- 

 able proof of a genius predominant over the general taste of an age 

 when every preacher was a punster, to have written verses where 

 laughter was to be raised, and the reader to be entertained with 

 sallies of pleasantry, without quibbles and conceits. His chief fault 

 is obscurity, arising from a remote phraseology, constrained combi- 

 nations, unfamiliar allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of 

 expression." 



HALL, REVEREND ROBERT, was born on the 2nd of May 1764, 

 at Arnsby in Leicestershire, where his father, of the same names, had 

 been settled since 1753 as pastor of a congregation of Particular 

 li.ipti.sts. He had come from Northumberland, where his forefathers 

 belonged to tbe clogs of yeomanry ; and he is stated to have been a 

 man, though not of much learning, of considerable native power of 

 mind. He is the author of several short religious publications : ono 

 of which, entitled ' A Help to Zion'a Travellers,' has been oftsn printed, 

 and is still read. 



The subject of this notice was the youngest of fourteen children. 

 It is related that he was two years old before he learned to speak : but 

 after this, the progress he made in all branches of his education was 

 very rapid. Though the circumstance is absurd, it is an evidence of 

 the impression he had made by his precocity that when he was only 

 eleven years old, a fellow-clergyman of his father's (Mr. Becby Wallis, 

 of Kettering), to whom he had been token on a visit, seriously set him 

 to preach to a select auditory assembled in his house. His gift of 

 ready expression had, it would appear, already strongly developed 

 itself. He used to attribute much of his early intellectual excitement 

 to the conversation of a metaphysical tailor in his native village, a 

 member of his father's congregation. 



He lost his mother in 1776, and it appears to have been after this 

 that he was sent to board at a Baptist school in Northampton, kept 

 by the Rev. Dr. John Ryland. Hera he remained for a year and a 

 half, after which he was placed, in October, 1778, at the Bristol 

 Academy, with the view to his becoming a Baptist minister. It was 

 the practice there, as it is in most Baptist theological seminaries, for 

 tbe students to commence preaching before they have finished their 

 education ; and Hall was formally set apart as a preacher by his 

 father's congregation in August, 17SO. In the autumn of 1781 he was 

 selected by the authorities of the Bristol Academy to be sent to King's 

 College, Aberdeen, on Dr. Ward's exhibition ; and there he studied 

 for the usual period of four whiter sessions ; proaching, at least occa- 

 sionally, in the intervening summers. It was at Aberdeen that Hall 

 and Sir James Mackintosh, then also a student at King's College, 

 became acquainted. They bore a close resemblance in intellectual 

 character, in their powers of mind as well as in their tastes, and the 

 intimacy which there sprung up between them led to an affectionate 

 friendship, which lasted while they both lived. 



Hall did not finally leave Aberdeen till May, 1785 ; but he had 

 already, during the preceding summer, officiated as one of the regular 

 pastors of the Baptist congregation at Broadmeail, Bristol, in associa- 

 tion with Dr. Caleb Evans ; and in August, 1785, he was also appointed 

 classical tutor in the Bristol Academy. His father died in 1791, and 

 the same year a difference with Dr. Evans led to hia removing from 

 Bristol and accepting an invitation to become pastor of the Baptist 

 congregation at Cambridge on the departure of the Rev. Robert 

 Robinson, who had adopted Unitarian views, to be successor to Dr. 

 Priestley at Birmingham. 



Robert Hall had already acquired considerable celebrity as a preacher, 

 but it was not till now that he appeared as an author; and the impulse 

 that sent him to the press was rather political than theological. His 

 first publication (unless we are to reckon some anonymous contribu- 

 tions to a Bristol newspaper in 1786-87) was a pamphlet entitled 

 ' Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom, being an Answer to 

 a Sermon by the Rev. John Clayton,' 8vo, 1791. Like most of tho 

 ardent minds of that day, he had beeu strongly excited and carried 



